


My Favourite Joke

by GothamNights



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Batjokes, Confession, Gay, Heartbreak, M/M, Only You Joker, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, arkham city
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 16:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12136467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GothamNights/pseuds/GothamNights
Summary: Fluffy one shot during Joker's last laugh in Arkham City. Batjokes is included in this ficFrom the end of Arkham City, Batman reflects on the Clown Prince of Crime, and his twisted love for him.





	My Favourite Joke

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is my first fanfic on AO3 and my first fanfic in the BatJokes category and I am unapologetically going to ship these two together until Batman ceases to exist (So never right?) Also if you don't like this ship or are against gay couples being together, please don't read, or leave comments telling me I am disgusting and vile and that two men together are wrong or that Batman or/and Joker are heterosexual, cause this is my opinion k?  
> Enjoy those of you who are Batjokes obsessed  
> GothamNights xx

My Favourite Joke

(Batman) 

The sharp slice is quick, clean and damns him in a moment. The unexpected jolt of pain yanks the cure from my hand as I clutch my injured shoulder, wrenching the small knife from my tendon. A piercing howl next to my ear, a scream of the damned causes an unwelcome swell of pity that consumes me momentarily before my mind shakes off my heart’s unwarranted compassion. I watch as a white gloved hand lunges for the vial, tragically cut short as glass splinters and fractures, emptying its precious cure over the cement bricks.

The hands are desperate, greedy as they mindlessly scrape both glass and cure together, bringing it to crimson lips as they hastily attempt to gulp enough to save them. The task is futile and the hands drop down and it takes every inch of my self control not to comfort him. Even now, knowing what he has done, hearing his own admittance, I am beyond hopelessly in love with him and it’s tearing me apart. My brain tries to rationalize it all, reminding me of how he has poisoned half of Gotham, mercilessly killing innocents if I hadn’t stopped him. I try to make his whacked schemes logical but my brain reminds me of its final ace. He killed Talia. God. Talia. What a mess that was and only because she did what I never could. Kill him. 

But do I tell him what has consistently kept me awake at night? Do I tell him that I need him, more than oxygen in my veins, more than blood in my heart, more than anything in all of Gotham? That no matter how many people he has killed, no matter what atrocities he has committed with glee, no matter what crimes he has crowned himself with, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, let him die.

‘Are you happy now?’ He spits, anger radiating off him as he slumps on the floor, one hand dangling off his knee, his entire being fragrant with disease and although self-inflicted my weak heart still bleeds. I briefly look away, my heart at war with any mortality I’ve ever known. The great Batman reduced to nothing by the Clown Prince of Crime, and the clown doesn’t even know it. When did this all-consuming, burning hatred morph into an incontrollable obsession, a desire to be near the clown when I didn’t need to, to hold him, to kiss him, to love him. 

‘Do you want to know something funny?’ The words are oxymoronic, but I am consumed by a desperate desire to hear his laughter, knowing that it will be the last time I will ever hear it. The thought places me in a vice and it is tightening as I watch as his diseased skin peels back into that infernal smile that should ignite loathing within me but ignites something else entirely.

‘Even after everything you’ve done. I would have saved you’ The words are seemingly coaxed from my throat, propelled forward by the devastating thought of never seeing the clown again. 

He laughs in response, that sadistic, yet endearing laugh that is riddled with phlegm and accompanied by a soft wheeze of the clown’s dying breaths. He is sporadically interrupted by coughing that are like a handful of bullets, weakening me with each cough that rattles from him. 

He is in agony, the coughs a precursor to his end as he helplessly sinks further to the floor, his already ill body no longer able to withstand the strain of keeping the clown on his elbows. He slumps gracefully, his long, lanky and quite honestly lithe body sinking like a stone as he summons the breath required to speak, for silence has never suited him.

‘You know…that’s actually pretty funny!!!’ he laughs again and it seems healthy, less riddled with disease and it’s almost as if the clown will spring up at any moment ready to continue his cruel tango, ready to dance with me once more. But I am so woefully wrong. 

His laughter takes the last of the fight from him and he takes heaving, gulping breaths that shake me as he claws for life that has long since been fading from his body. His hand clutches his chest as if he is sharing a private joke that is splitting his sides and my heart breaks. Even now he is laughing, finding a joke in everything, even his own death. 

I walk over to him, unable to stand still and watch this unbearable torture. It rips away all of my facades until I am that little boy in the alley again, hands coated in his parents’ blood helpless to save them and now helpless to save the clown. He struggles again to inhale and I ever so briefly look away, the weakness visible for everyone to see. But I look back wanting to see his green eyes alive and sparking with fight one last time, for one last life changing memory with the clown. For there have been so many. From the night he fell into the chemicals and was reborn, to the ‘incident on Arkham Asylum’, to the clingy phone calls and the poisoning of myself, the killing of Talia and finally, his last laugh. 

He shudders once and his eyes roll ever so slightly back as he body falls limp and his face, permanently disfigured curls back into his ever familiar motif, but the smile has no lunacy behind it, no madness, no life, no spark, no Joker. 

His thugs are cheering at the door, shouting for the man who they believed would now be immortal but bittersweet irony has killed him instead. They still instantly at the image of the clown in my arms and Harley, his acolyte and partner only in crime, gasps and I know behind it, her dive into insanity has only made her plummet further into its depths with the clown’s demise. 

The police lights are bright, their sirens blaring as the ever inept G.C.P.D officers prepare for the carnage they expect from the dissolution of Arkham but instead are confronted with something else entirely. Batman, his arch nemesis in his arms. Gordon tries to stop me, demanding to know what happened but I’m numb, disconnected completely from a reality without the clown. I tenderly place him down on the police car and my heart lurches as his arm rolls off the bonnet and hangs limply off the side. It’s more than I can take and I stride off ignoring the shocked gazes, the hating stares and Jim’s pleas for information. 

Losing the clown has made me lose a part of myself, made me lose something imperative to my health and wellbeing. An obsessive habit formed over years of being the Batman and suddenly it is just as inaccessible as the clown himself. His death has made me unstable, made the thin line between justice and insanity even more blurred. Some days, silently listening to the Joker serenade me, tell me I am his only one, I feel more and more like I fall on his side and I will never be rid of the Joker, of that I am sure.

**Author's Note:**

> Genuinely wanted to write a one shot of this ever since I finished playing Arkham City three months ago. Joker's death emotionally wrecked me tbh and I'm still not over it, specially as Mark Hamill is my favourite Joker. in my opinion their relationship within the game was gay as anything, especially the Only You voicemail at the end. Anyway thank you so much for reading and if you enjoyed leave kudos and comment.  
> Thank you  
> GothamNights xx


End file.
